Getting Through the Repression
Atravesar la represión
A student notices she is holding back emotion after a difficult conversation with her mother. She anticipates that repressed feeling will surface later and wants to move through it toward a bigger space. The teacher points out the layers of strategy and anxiety wrapped around that expectation.
Getting Through the Repression
A student notices she is holding back emotion after a difficult conversation with her mother. She anticipates that repressed feeling will surface later and wants to move through it toward a bigger space. The teacher points out the layers of strategy and anxiety wrapped around that expectation.
I was talking to my mother last night, and I needed to repress in order to be able to talk to her. I know, and you probably know me well enough too, that it's going to hit me later, probably tonight sometime. I'm not exactly sure what the question is. It's something like: when I allow myself to feel everything, there's this space, and it can be really blissful and loving. But I'm not resisting, and yet there seems to be this other repression, maybe a deeper layer, something unconscious.
First, regarding the repression you're describing: there's a lot of intellectual knowing here. You know the patterns of how things happen for you, so you're expecting something to hit you later.
I can also feel it.
You can feel it, but what is it you're feeling? Is it anxiety?
No, it's just a little bit there. But the rest of it is intellectual, yes.
Feeling now vs. anticipating later
Whatever it is you're feeling, it could be something other than anxiety around the thought that something is going to come and hit you. That anxiety is what's happening in the moment. There's a conflict between wanting to feel through what you expect you're repressing and what is actually happening right now. You're going backward: creating space, and then wanting to go into what you imagine you're repressing.
I guess that's why I didn't have a really clear question. I guess what I'm trying to say is: is there more? I suppose we'll see tonight.
My point is that when whatever happens tonight happens, tonight or not, or tomorrow, it happens then.
It's like I can feel it now, but not fully. It feels like a little animal poking its head above ground.
I understand. But what I'm saying is: whatever you're feeling now, the animal poking its head up, that's the extent of what you're feeling now. There's quite a bit of thinking around it: "That's a thing I need to feel more of," and "Later there will be more." There's a map and a strategy around what the process should be and what you should be feeling and when. Just notice that. If you're feeling anxiety, feel the anxiety. If you're worried you're going to feel pain, you'll feel it when you feel it.
Two complementary movements
To your question: yes, there is more. When you're creating space, you're observing what's happening, and that feels good. But there's also the other side, which is going into it.
But feeling it is going into it. My experience is that when I dive in, then there's a space.
Then what are you not diving into now? Because you're saying you're repressing.
You're right. That's intellectual. I don't know for sure. But do you want to bet?
Even if you're right, what is happening now is that you have an anxiety around when the repression is going to open up, when what you're pushing away is going to come to the surface. If it comes tonight, it comes tonight. What's the problem if it comes in an hour, or tomorrow?
I think the question comes less from an anxiety about when it's going to come and more from a seeking of a bigger space.
Because you're wanting to get through the repression so you can get somewhere bigger.
Yes. And it just creates more.
The seeking that sustains it
That's exactly why I was pointing to the sense that it's going to happen later and you need to get through the repression. Why?
Because otherwise all the feeling is just too much. It would take over the group, or take over a conversation with my mother, where it needed to be about her.
You can regulate that. When you were with your mother, you contained. And here in the group you can decide how much to contain. But there are other times when you could fully make space to go the other way. One movement is to create space through a certain distance of paying attention. The other is to fully let yourself be taken by it, to the point where it would feel like too much.
Testing the "too much"
I would suggest looking at the "it's too much" or "it will be too much" as a worry, an anxiety, something to test or set aside. Because that is what's going to keep you from actually fully feeling.
Yeah. Okay.
Thank you for sharing.